Friday, October 31, 2008

This is a video from CNN of McCain spokesman Mike Goldfarb accusing Obama of being an anti-semite for once being friends with Rashid Khalidi (who, for the record, is not an anti-semite). His stonewalling technique is roughly equivalent to that of a tenth grader whose bag of weed has been found by his parents.

Conservative editor and windbag William Kristol. I think they gave him nitrous oxide before the shoot to keep that shit eating grin on his face the whole 7 minutes.

“I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way,” the executive said. He added that the money could also be used as a backstop in case “recession turns into depression or what happens in the future.”

There was not a word about lending — not to businesses or home buyers or car buyers or students or other consumers. Just the opposite. In response to another question, the executive said that the bank expected to continue to tighten credit.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

This is a big deal. It seems the the Mexican government is attempting to use the world financial crisis and the inefficient(read: massively corrupt) Mexican national oil company, PEMEX, to erode the President Lazaro Cardenas' 1938's nationalization of the nation's oil in 1938. A longer post is on the way.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

To get working class Americans to swallow the bailout plan, Congress, lead by the Democrats, had to add a few spoonfuls of sugar. One of those was a promise to put a cap on executive pay on Wall Street. However, it turns out that Wall Street compensation is almost as outrageous as before

So far this year, nine of the largest U.S. banks, including some that have cut thousands of jobs, have seen total costs for salaries, benefits and bonuses grow by an average of 3 percent from a year ago, according to an Associated Press review.

Even now, when the bailout money is already flowing, no executives are taking pay cuts. To experts, the result was easily forecast

But executive pay experts said the regulations are too weak to spark major reform in the way companies compensate top officers, and too narrow in scope to change the pay structure that encouraged finance executives in boom times to take on enormous risks.

Even Neel Kashkari, Paulson's right-hand man on the bailout and a fellow ex-Goldman Sachs executive, told executives that he would protect their pocketbooks

Attempts by Congress to make beneficiaries pay for their mistakes, such as placing caps on executive pay, were "quite reasonable" and "a pretty modest hindrance to you," he told them, according to a recording of the Sept. 28 conference call made public on video-sharing Web site YouTube.

The public should continue to follow this issue even if the media does not. They should keep asking the members of Congress who touted the pay restrictions in the bailout bill which executives are getting their pay cut.

That's a particularly good question to ask when President Obama tells us that we will all have to sacrifice to get through these trying times.

Devoted Bono Watchers will remember this is not Bono's first foray into journalism. Two years ago, Bono "edited" a single edition of the Independent, the liberal British daily. Counterpuncher Harry Browne summed up the politics of the paper

Even "The 5-Minute Interview", with BBC radio DJ Zane Lowe, finishes with an incongruous, not to say idiotically phrased, question, "Can big corporations make a difference to people's lives?" Lowe sings from Bono's hymnsheet: "The only thing people who are trying to make a difference can do is work alongside corporations. We're not going to abolish big business, people aren't going to stop drinking Starbucks and buying Nike, but you can say to them, 'There's a big difference you can make and if we find a way to make it easier for you, would you contribute?'"

This notion of lowest common denominator activism is the keynote of Bono's signed, somewhat tetchy editorial: "So forgive us if we expand our strategy to reach the high street, where so many of you live and work. We need to meet you where you are as you shop, as you phone, as you lead your busy, businessy lives."

If the past is any indicator, we can look forward to NYT columns gushing with praise for any western leader or corporation willing to lend their name to Bono's "cause."

On the far left, we will meet "better dead than RED", a reaction to big business that is not wholly unjustified. But given the emergency that is Aids, I don't see this as selling out. I see this as ganging up on the problem. This emergency demands a radical centre, as well as a radical edge. Creeping up on the everyday. Making the difficult easy.

The idea is that ordinary people can "team up" with people like George Bush, Gordon Brown and Jesse Helms (imagine that degenerate cracker giving two shits about Black people) to help Africa. Sounds plausible, but what happens when real African people decide to resist another threat, like AFRICOM? Will Bono use one of his columns to condemn the U.S. and show solidarity with Africans resisting American imperialism?

I think not. We wouldn't want to upset the rest of the team.

In other celebrity news...Angelina Jolie, the UN's head celeb, does the "bearing witness" thing in Afghanistan. Last time Jolie visited a country under U.S. occupation, she penned this little ditty (will someone keep these people out of the papers) backing the occupation. Jolie's visit is well-timed considering Obama's promise to surge in Afghanistan.

Friday, October 24, 2008

In understanding why, in light of all the evidence for a retrial, Troy Davis has nearly been murdered by the state of Georgia three times, it is essential to look at Bill Clinton's Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Marlene Martin does just that.

For once, the right man gets it. Burge, a former Chicago police lieutenant, was responsible for torturing black men into signing confessions for crimes they didn't commit, some of whom ended up on death row. Hoo-ray!

Monday, October 20, 2008

Most of us would welcome Paulson, Bernanke and CO. throwing themselves from buildings. Unlike most of their precursors during the Great Depression, however, the bankers and other capitalists who helped cause the current economic meltdown seem to be floating pretty with the help of golden parachutes. On the other hand, the brunt of the violence caused by this crisis is faced by the millions of Americans suffering eviction, job loss, continued unemployment and bankruptcy. As a recent article from TomDispatch shows, Addie Polk is not the only one driven to the most desperate of actions. Suicides and violent confrontations with the police are taking place across the country and receiving no coverage from the media. This article gives a sobering view of the inhumanity of the crisis never mentioned by Obama, McCain and the rest who support bail outs to Wall Street and nothing for the rest of us.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

As we're constantly reminded, the collapse of the market means that we need financial experts now more than ever. Despite the infantile protestations of a demagogic populace rejecting its betters, it's painfully apparent to the educated classes that expertise is crucial at this conjuncture. Bertolt Brecht wrestled with a similar situation in the 1930s, and I thought a poem of his might help us illuminate our current position.

Difficulty of Governing

1Ministers are always telling the peopleHow difficult it is to govern. Without the ministersCorn would grow into the ground, not upward.Not a lump of coal would leave the mine ifThe Chancellor weren't so clever. Without the Minister of PropagandaNo girl would ever agree to get pregnant. Without the Minister of WarThere'd never be a war. Indeed, whether the sun would rise in the morningWithout the Fuhrer's permissionIs very doubtful, and if it did, it would beIn the wrong place.

2It's just as difficult, so they tell usTo run a factory. Without the ownerThe walls would fall in and the machines rust, so they say.Even if a plough could get made somewhereIt would never reach a field without theCunning words the factory owners writers the peasants: whoCould otherwise tell them that the plough exists? And whatWould become of an estate without the landlord? SurelyThey'd be sowing rye where they had set the potatoes.

3If governing were easyThere'd be no need for such inspired minds as the Fuhrer's.If the worker knew how to run his machine andThe peasant could tell his factory from a pastryboardThere'd be no need of factory owner or landlord.It's only because they are all so stupidThat a few are needed who are clever.

4Could it be thatGoverning is so difficult onlyBecause swindling and exploitation take some learning?

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

"While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for," Buckley wrote. "Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case," he also wrote.

Now I know what you're thinking, "what would his father say?" But Dad may not have been far behind him, had he lived.

But the conviction hinted in the columns only hardened during the last year of Buckley’s life, when he arrived at a tragic view of the Iraq War. He saw it as a disaster and thought that the conservative movement he had created had in effect committed intellectual suicide by failing to maintain critical distance from the Bush administration.

Instead of following the usual Bible format - lots of words but somewhat lacking in celebrity portraits - Swedish ad man Dag Soderberg has decided to repackage it in the style of Vogue. Passages are written out in a magazine-style format and accompanied by striking images. Jolie's picture is included alongside Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and U2 frontman Bono, to illustrate the importance of doing good deeds.

You know the world is in need of a new Left when an ad agent can get away with equating liberal, do-gooders like Angelina Jolie and Bono to Gandhi and Mandela. I guess in the current political context, celebrities who care about Africa seem like the best thing going. However, let us not forget that the politics of humanitarianism (I guess that's "doing good deeds") can put you on the wrong side of the struggle, like Jolie's support for US occupation of Iraq and Bono's hobnobbing with every dirtbagpolitician under the sun in the name of "supporting Africa."There are enough reasons to look forward to a revival of Left-wing politics, but one bonus might be the end of celebrities making pious, patronizing appeals to "care."

Friday, October 10, 2008

This is entertaining. John McCain tries to calm a crowd of rabid racists in, where else, Wisconsin. Listen to the crowd rage as McCain hints that his opponent may, in fact, be a human being. Imagine the joy which would pour forth if he would let his true feelings out and yell "That nigger is going to be president over my dead body!" The crowd is all but pleading for it.

Also note the bizarreness of his reply to the woman who doesn't trust Obama because "he's an Arab." "He's a decent family man." WTF?! That'd be like if I said "Tim is a good cook" and you said "No, he wears bifocals."

Check out the article as well.It takes a lot of nerve to look a bunch of college students in the eye and tell them that taxpayers could actually make money off of these bad loans that no one in the private sector will touch with a ten-foot pole. I guess that's the kind of talent it takes to be a member of the U.S. ruling class, even for a nice liberal like Tammy.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

W.D. Ehrhart is a Vietnam veteran who became involved with Vietnam Veterans Against the War when he returned home. His work features prominently in a course on the Vietnam war I'm currently helping teach.

To Those Who Have Gone Home Tired

After the streets fall silentAfter the bruises and the tear-gassed eyes are healedAfter the consensus has returnedAfter the memories of Kent and My Lai and Hiroshimalose their powerand their connections with each otherand the sweaters labeled Made in TaiwanAfter the last American dies in Canadaand the last Korean in prisonand the last Indian at Pine RidgeAfter the last whale is emptied from the seaand the last leopard emptied from its skinand the last drop of blood refined by ExxonAfter the last iron door clangs shutbehind the last conscienceand the last loaf of bread is hammered into bulletsand the bulletsscattered among the hungry

What answers will you findWhat armor will protect youwhen your children ask you

Monday, October 6, 2008

I'm not sure how much this has gotten around, but this report, Baghdad nights: evaluating the US military 'surge' using nighttime light signatures, is essential reading.Basically, several geographers and one political science professor from UCLA used satellite imagery of Baghdad's lights at night to observe the changes in population distribution throughout surge. Overall, a decrease in nighttime lights in Sunni and mixed neighborhoods, while Shia nighborhoods remained the same. In particular, the neighborhoods of East Rashid and West Rashid, historically mixed areas with a slight Sunni majority, experienced the greatest decline in light density.

The outcome seems to have been both a total loss of Sunni population (these neighbor-hoods have produced many of the refugees fleeing Baghdad) and a successful Shiastrategy of `pacifying' those areas in the city hitherto most hostile to Iraq's largely Shia government. The city neighborhoods east of the Tigris River, many of which were mixed Sunni/Shia and other before, are now heavily Shia. But citywide, there has been a dramatic decrease in the extent of ethno-sectarian residential intermixing. This probably explains the overall lowering of the level of violence. Locally, there is no one left to attack.

The verdict:

Yet, as other Iraqi cities experienced just such an intensification of their nighttime lights, Baghdad had the opposite experience. We interpret this change as indicating that violence has decreased in Baghdad not because of an overall improvement in material conditions or because US troops have imposed a Pax Americana on the city but because large parts of the city have been emptied of their existing populations and sometimes replaced with coreligionists, thus reducing the local stimulus to violence emphasized in the Jones Report (2007).

Friday, October 3, 2008

The fix, as they say, is in. In the meantime I couldn't help but notice this story about a 90 year old woman who attempted suicide after the bank foreclosed on her. Sadly, I think we can look forward to more of this.